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John Paulson's Top Five Holdings

John Paulson is the President and Portfolio Manager of Paulson & Co. The guru became a guru by short-selling subprime mortgages in 2007, but is most known for his stance on gold. During the third quarter the guru bought 8 new stocks bringing his portfolio to 87 stocks valued at over $15.516 billion, up from $14.4 billion last quarter. You can check out John Paulson’s complete third quarter portfolio here. Also check out:

Paulson’s largest position is in the SPDR Gold Trust where he maintains 31,500,000 shares. The guru’s holdings make up for 8.5% of his total portfolio as well as for 2.29% of SPDR Gold Trust’s shares outstanding.

The guru did not alter his holdings in the SPDR Gold Trust over the past quarter. During the second quarter of 2013 the guru sold over 11.5 million shares of the trust.

Paulson’s holding history:

The SPDR Gold Trust is a part of the SPDR family of exchange-traded funds managed and marketed by State Street Global Advisors. SPDR Gold Shares is the largest physically backed gold exchange traded fund in the world.

SPDR Gold Shares’ historical pricing:

The GuruFocus warning for the SPDR Gold Trust is that the company’s interest coverage is extremely low. The trust’s earnings cannot cover its interest expense, meaning that if the situation continues, the company might have to issue more debt.

According to the ETF’s website, the trust is down about -21.15% year to date and the median gold spot price is down approximately -20.44% year to date.

Paulson’s second largest holding is in Family Dollar Stores where he holds on to 11,265,600 shares of the company’s stock. His position makes up for 5.2% of his total portfolio and 9.80% of the company’s shares outstanding.

During the third quarter Paulson increased his position 51.35% by purchasing an additional 3,822,000 shares of Family Dollar Stores stock. He bought these shares in the quarterly price range of $62.83 to $74.70, with an estimated average quarterly price of $70.26 per share. Since then the price per share has increased a slight 0.1%.

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